Note: Shudder is occasionally glitchy, offering me films that then appear to be there by accident (clicking on the title for info brings up the "this movie is not available in your region" message), but I pressed play and the film played . . . so I hope it's there for most of you to enjoy.
A lot of people seemed to really enjoy Let The Wrong One In, including people I normally tend to agree with, and I was in the mood for something light this week. Something clearly infused with horror tropes, but without the need to put viewers through the wringer. If that is something you might be interested in then I can recommend Let The Wrong One In.
Sadly, I cannot recommend it if you're after a very good horror comedy. It's okay, but nothing more than that.
Karl Rice plays Matt, a young man who ends up with a big problem on his hands when he lets his older brother, Deco (Eoin Duffy), back into the family home while their Ma (Hilda Fay) is out. Deco has been bitten and turned into a vampire, despite trying to explain away his lack of any reflection by claiming that a mirror must be broken, and Matt wants to figure out how to help him. The first thing to do is call the doctor, which prompts the arrival of Henry (Anthony Head). Henry seems to know a lot about the situation, and it turns out that he has turned himself into a vampire hunter ever since his fiancé (Sheila, played by Mary Murray) was turned while out on her Hen party.
Written and directed by Conor McMahon (no stranger to the horror comedy, having delivered the very enjoyable Stitches about a decade ago), this is a film that I kept willing to get better. I wanted more jokes, more excessive jets of blood, and more ridiculousness. It just never settles into a proper groove, as it were, and what you end up with is something that is intermittently amusing, but nowhere near as much fun as it should be. McMahon is the one to blame, because the biggest problems lie with the script and the pacing (the runtime is 100 minutes, this should have had at least 10 minutes cut from that, easily).
Rice and Duffy are decent leads, with the latter particularly good fun in his portrayal of a vampiric lad who doesn't seem too far removed from his usual self (aka a dodgy guy always looking tired, mindless, and/or after his next hit). Despite not knowing what accent he was aiming for, Head is fine in his role, although it's an obvious piece of stunt casting that seems to work against the film. If you're looking to easily cut anything from this then you'd probably start with the character played by Head. David Pearse is a lot of fun as a neighbour who ends up in danger when he realises that his pet rabbit has gone AWOL, both Murray and Fay do just fine, and Lisa Haskins makes a good impression with what I believe is her feature film debut (even if it's hard to believe that her character, Natalie, would actually be in a relationship with Deco).
The highlights here include some decent lines peppered throughout the script and a running gag about the possibility of vampires being able to transform into bats and fly, and you get a couple of extra moments during the end credits that should leave you with a smile on your face, but there's a lot more that doesn't work, whether it is the variable FX work throughout, the strangely flexible approach to vampire lore, or the clumsy attempts to layer the laughs with a message about family and supporting one another. I really wanted to like this one, but I didn't. It feels like McMahon came up with a great title and then tried to make a film to live up to it. He didn't succeed.
4/10
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